Cornell University to team up With Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Cornell University is bolstering its bid in the Bloomberg administration’s contest to construct an engineering and applied-science campus inside New York City by teaming up with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
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Cornell, which already runs the Weill Cornell Medical College in the city, answered back by announcing that it is working with the premier tech school in Israel. Technion has helped steer the country from its origins as an agricultural exporter to become a major player in globalized world of high technology.

“We wanted to find an institution that had complementary strengths to Cornell’s strengths,” said David Skorton, Cornell’s president. “Technion is among the world’s leaders of turning science into jobs.”

There are over 4,000 tech startups in Israel, second only to the Silicon Valley, according to Technion officials. Of those startups, 70% were founded by Technion graduates, school president Peretz Lavie said.

Technion’s success has also been noticed by tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm, which have each set up outposts near the Technion campus in Haifa to lure new graduates, Lavie said.

“In the last 20 years we moved from Jaffa oranges to semiconductors,” Lavie said of Israel’s economy. “What we can do for New York is similar to what we did for the state of Israel.”

WSJ